The given path's format is not supported (listing files)

Question

I'm trying to move all files from a NAS to a cloud provider, which does not allow the char ?<>|/\\*:" in its filenames, unfortunately some of the files do have these char in their filenames.

So I would like to fix these filenames before doing the migration, and thus I had the idea to list the forbiden filenames, but the forbiden char crash the Get-childItem command and I'm a bit stuck

Here's the command I use

 Get-ChildItem $myPath -Recurse -Force -File | Where-Object {$_.name -match '[?<>|/\\*:"]+'} | select fullname, name

And here's the output I get :

Get-ChildItem : The given path's format is not supported
Char, Line:1 : 1
+ Get-ChildItem path -Recurse -Force  ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-ChildItem], NotSupportedException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.NotSupportedException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetChildItemCommand

Is there a way to make the command fail but still tell me where was the file which crashed it ? Or is there another command or parameter to use to do what I want ?

Edit : For now I found a workaround, rather than mounting the distant nas with New-PSDrive, I sshed into the NAS and used the linux bash which was installed on it and supports these filenames but I am still interested by the answer to how to do it with powershell

This is unrelated to the regex. What is the exact value of `$myPath`? — Mathias R. Jessen, Mar 13 '21 at 16:16
My question is not about the regex, the regex is fine and the value of mypath is irrevelant, but if it can help you it's '.\ARCHIVES - PRE MIGRATION CLOUD\MKG' I know the command is fine since if I use it in a directory in which none of the files have forbiden char in their name, it works fine. My problem is if the files have forbiden chars, it crashes the command — Maxime, Mar 13 '21 at 17:01
I'm asking because it's unclear from your question whether `$myPath` refers to a location on the NAS or a local NTFS volume. — Mathias R. Jessen, Mar 13 '21 at 17:03
use a `try/catch` block and have the `catch` send out the error info. — Lee_Dailey, Mar 13 '21 at 19:09
@MathiasR.Jessen sorry if it was unclear, it's a location on the nas — Maxime, Mar 14 '21 at 14:37

mklement0 · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-11T00:07:35.210

Use the the common -ErrorVariable (-ev) parameter parameter in combination with the common -ErrorAction (-ea) parameter:

Get-ChildItem $myPath -Recurse -Force -File -ea SilentlyContinue -ev errs | 
  Where-Object {$_.name -match '[?<>|/\\*:"]+'} | select fullname, name

Write-Verbose -vb 'The following paths caused errors:'
$errs.TargetObject

-ea SilentlyContinue silences error display (and continues execution as long as the errors are non-terminating, which they typically are).
-ev errs captures the non-terminating errors in self-chosen variable $errs, which can be inspected later.

The .TargetObject property of the System.Management.Automation.ErrorRecord instances collected in $errs contains the source object that triggered the error, which in the case at hand is the full path of the file-system object; $errs.TargetObject lists them all, across all error objects in the collection, courtesy of member-access enumeration.

Update:

The above doesn't seem to help in the specific case at hand, as seemingly only a single error record is returned that doesn't have .TargetObject filled in and mentions only the starting directory of the recursive enumeration.
The Include * approach shown below helped to at least narrow the problem down to individual directories containing offending files.

Adding -Include * to force explicit processing of individual files in each directory may help:

# Tries to find offending file names only, via `$errs`
$null = Get-ChildItem $myPath -Recurse -Force -File -Include * -ea SilentlyContinue -ev errs

Another option, given that you say that passing -Directory doesn't report errors, is to apply Get-Item * -Force to each directory and see if the offending file names can at least be narrowed down to specific directories:

# Tries to find offending file names only, via `$errs`
$null = & { Get-Item $myPath; Get-ChildItem $myPath -Recurse -Force -Directory } |
  Get-Item -Path { Join-Path $_.FullName * } -Force -ea SilentlyContinue -ev errs

The given path's format is not supported (listing files)

1 Answers1